It was as an amateur with Distillery that Derek Dougan made his name, featuring more often at left-half or on the left-wing
than in the centre-forward role that would make him famous. With the Whites he won an Irish Cup winner’s
medal in 1956, scoring in an initial 2-2 draw with Glentoran before the match
was settled after a second replay. By
the time he left Belfast
in August 1957, aged just nineteen, Dougan had added Northern Ireland Youth and
Amateur caps to those he won as a Schoolboy.
He had captained his club and featured in virtually every out-field
position, and earned them a £4,000 fee from English giants, Portsmouth.

Despite preferring life in the half-back
line, Portsmouth
had signed Dougan as a forward. Within
months he was leading the line in the First Division and coming to the
attention of Peter Doherty. Doherty
awarded Dougan a ‘B’ Cap against Rumania – he scored a hattrick in a
6-0 win and at the end of that season took him to the World Cup Finals. Dougan had just 28 League appearances behind
him.

Still just twenty years-old, Dougan’s
inclusion in Northern
Ireland’s World Cup squad was meant to be
for experience only. But when regular number nine, Billy Simpson picked-up an
injury in training Doherty called on the raw six-footer to lead the line for
the opening match against Czechoslovakia. Although the game resulted in a 1-0 win,
Doherty felt that Dougan wasn’t quite ready for the Big Stage and it was his
only game in Sweden
– he was however assured that he had a bright future in the green shirt.

Transferred for £15,000 to Blackburn
in March 1959, Dougan had already gained a reputation for speaking his
mind. He further cemented that
reputation when he handed in a transfer request on the eve of the 1960 FA Cup
Final – one of the few regrets he held from his long career. That that match ended in a 3-0 defeat by
Wolves is often pointed to as illustrating Dougan’s single-mindedness at the
expense of the team. While few would
argue that he was strong-willed, he was held in high-regard by his fellow
players for his work as Chairman of the PFA in the 1970s and in his role as
spokesman for injured ex-players right up to his death.

Dougan left EwoodPark
for Aston Villa in July 1961. His time
at Villa Park got off to a bad start when a
car-crash ruled him out for three months.
Later he would become popular with the Villa faithful, earning the
nickname ‘Cheyenne’, courtesy of his shaved head. Further injuries caused Dougan to lose form
and he fell out of favour with Joe Mercer and became frustrated with the game
in general. In June 1963 he took the bold step of transferring to Third
Division Peterborough.

The move down the divisions put Dougan’s
international career on hiatus. He had
become a regular in the Northern
Ireland team in the early sixties, scoring
three times in nine games up to 1963.
When he returned to the side in 1965 he scored in a memorable 3-2 win
over Scotland.
However, the one criticism of the remainder of his international career was
that, for a prolific marksman in the Football League, his goals on the world
stage were rare, and he was guilty of missing a few sitters too. Still, his fancy flicks and sheer enthusiasm
have been long remembered at WindsorPark, and most would
forgive his fairly average return of eight goals in 43 games.

His two seasons in the lower-league allowed
Dougan to regain his form and fitness, and more importantly his love of the
game. He returned to the top-flight with
Leicester in 1965, and moved on to Wolves for
£50,000 in March 1967. It was at
Molineaux that he enjoyed the game the most and he became known as ‘The Crown
Prince of Football’. Nine goals in his
first eleven games helped Wolves to promotion back to the First Division and
over eight years he helped the club to the UEFA Cup Final in 1972 (where they
lost to Spurs) and a League Cup Final success over Man City in 1974.

In July 1973 Dougan was instrumental in organising a match between a Shamrock Rovers XI (aka an All-Ireland XI) and Brazil. The match, with Dougan among the scorers in a 4-3 defeat for the Irish, was opposed by the hierarchy of the Irish FA and the FAI also reportedly had reservations. Dougan alleged that the IFA President, Harry Cavan, instructed Northern Ireland manager Terry Neill not to select him again for the international team as way of punishment for his involvement. This allegation overlooks the fact that Dougan was in the twilight of his career anyway, had not scored in his previous ten international appearances, and had in any case not featured in the previous five Northern Ireland teams. Further, international careers of the other six Northern Ireland players included in the Shamrock Rovers XI team all continued unabated.

Dougan retired from full-time football in
1975. His goalscoring feats included 222
League goals (a record for an Ulsterman) from 546 games and hattricks in the
First and Second Divisions, the FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup. He became
player/manager/chief-executive at KetteringTown and was quickly on
the wrong side of the FA again as he introduced sponsorship to the team’s
shirts. Later he briefly returned for an
ill-fated spell on the Wolves board. For
25 years Dougan was seldom out of the spot-light, appearing on TV and standing
for political office. One of his final
public appearances was as pall bearer at the funeral of one of old friends,
George Best.

The Doog was an articulate and opinionated man. On the pitch he always gave 100% in an era when you had to be as 'hard as nails' to play up front. The controversy he generated throughout his career should not be allowed to detract from his fine career at, most notably, Wolves.